10% nerf and a 10% buff aren't the same: R-Druid / R - Shaman Skill lineup comparison

Classes Shaman
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Math
500 - 10% = 50 = 450
450 + 10% = 45 = 445

450+11%(49) = 499
450+12%(54)= 504

Again Fix shaman healing… i have 3 healers same ilvl, their emergancy heals is 23k…(Don’t get me started on how pathetic mana usage is on a class that’s never suppose to run out - with shields galore that’s SUPPOSE to regen it, making the talents themselves 10000% useless).

When tanks have 500k… that isn’t even 10% of their health bar… when it’s constantly getting damaged, on our most expensive heal… it’s a lose lose situation STILL. Because of bad math by the developer team.

The constant nerf’s and level shrinkage ‘i think i fixed it’ doesn’t mean it’s fixed, in the above scenario it means you should of at LEAST buffed it 11.2% to reset the NERFS you gave it prior to… (Not counting stat squish for new expansions)

When I claimed they needed 150% healing boost, it would be at LEAST 20-25% healing on each of the resto shaman healing skills… which would finally put them on par with druids/preserv/mistwalkers/holy priests
(15% - almost there - Healing Tide Totem got a 100% buff! So looks like someone listened)

People seem to think this number is a lot, it’s not really when you take the total value of ‘r-shaman healing’ double it, and add half the original value you get on par with other classes…

Please stop giving me the lame bs ‘but shaman has utility’ Here is the skill breakdown and MASHUP between BOTH r-druid, and r-shaman

Druid has
Mass entangle(Earthgrab totem ),
Typhoon(we will put Tremor Totem as it is situational anyway - and typhoon has more options for use),

Cat form = Wolf Form - The defense granted by ghost wolf is barely marketable when just shifting into cat form breaks snares, with only a GCD CD. Because it takes time to ‘build up’ medicore defense in wolf form(4seconds) - this wait time for (talented)defenses SHOULD be reduced as casting anything breaks it and it only provides 20% . Having druids being able to shift out of ‘snares’ unhexable/polymorphed, if you want shamans being able to take the hit… would be better to put the talent as an instant defense.

Barkskin = Astral Shift
Iron Bark = Earth Shield
Wild Charge(15second cd) = Gust of Wind(30second) This allows catform to move faster then wolf indoors and over long distances are actually measured to be about equal, with cat form pulling ahead in short distance travel, ghost wolf can not compete with travel form.
skullbash(windshear),
incap roar(stun totem)
Cyclone (hex- npc specific) their’s is unbreakable from damage.
Stampeding Roar = Wind Totem
Tranq = Healing Tide
Incarn = Ascension
Druid has an ‘echo’ ability: That allows their most expensive heal to be applied to 2 targets at the same time, the applier uses next to zero mana, allowing them to effectively cast lifebloom on 2 targets then regrowth on a 3rd to apply it to 3 targets at a time, not to mention talents that allow wild growth to apply skills to other targets after cast (40% of the time) - (talent echo for shamans - 2 targets riptide - 2 totems)
Efflorence = Rain (If spec’d acid is like sunfire)
Innervate = Water Shild/Mana Tide (free casts are stronger then regen by default because they aren’t limited - Mana tide gives 1 spell worth of mana, and shield… takes at least 20seconds to get 1 spell worth of Mana back thanks to MP5)

Wild Growth = Spirit Link (Yes, in M+ situations I compare them similiar because it actually requires coordination to use properly. When it comes to raids(which then it would be compared with a ‘unbuffed’ tranq - again limitations vs non ontop of measured radius) for ‘max benefits’ and in m+ it hits 5 targets, and has a longer cooldown in comparison, the benefits of wild growth is that targets don’t need to be stacked for it to work, ontop of adding procs to other skills. Comparing of 'redistrubuting active health(NOT HEALING) vs healing total health - with the procs and control of the skills below make it pretty much unpar with it’s strength… given more options/control of CV and AS, with WG the Druid kit of ‘overlooked extras’ actually outperforms the SL skill.

You can also add Convoke, and Adaptive Swarm comparisons to Spirit Link situation wise - in which such that skill would actually be used in various content and all of those have a shorter CD and are stronger together then SL the benefits of the control outweigh the single use for Spirit Link with it’s huge CD

ALL the same skills - druid and shaman are almost identically the same class, their kits are next to the same in essence, but shamans are reactive heals and druids are proactive/predictive…

There is next to zero reason why the developer of Resto Druids can’t take over the developement of Resto Shamans (instead of passing it onto the ‘rogue’ developer, which was done in the past…) As the only real difference between them is proactive/reactive healing.

Ya’ll know what it’s like to go into a dungeon/raid and heal someone and not see their healthbar budge at all? Because the auto-attack damage done is more then what lands? It sucks, it means zero recovery at all. Shamans make disc priest out of combat healing look like winning the lottery. Sorry but this crap is completely fustrating. Newayz hope you guys learned a little something, about the kits and the REAL differences between the two classes…

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I agree. From a design standpoint Druid’s kit is 10x better than Shaman’s. To start, I wish our totems couldn’t be destroyed in PVP. HTT 1.5 minute cooldown with pvp talent / SLT 3 minute cooldown. Both can be destroyed with a click making them pretty pointless. If a druid pops tree of life there is nothing I can do. Unhexable which makes no sense. Ascendance is especially weak in pvp. It feels so bad to press and does next to no healing. The only time i get good results with it is if I pop the 2 min cooldown Ancestral Guidance beforehand.

Give us a HPS increase over druid if we are going to be worse in utility in almost every aspect.

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Yeah they need to give shamans the paladin treatment, used to be able to dispel/steal pally wings until blizz prevented that. I think some of the big cd totems need to be indestructible for shaman.

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Impeccable

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What this breakdown tells me is that you either don’t play RDruid, or you aren’t very good at relating the two classes’ abilities.

For example, Earth Shield is not like Iron Bark, an external CD, but like Lifebloom, in that you always roll it on the tank/priority heal target unless you NEED to move it.

Your comparison between Ghost Wolf and Cat form makes sense…from a Shaman only perspective. From the Shaman only perspective, your breakdown is logical; all of that for JUST a GCD? But resto Druids are the GCD healer, and every global not spent doing healing nor applying DoTs means you fall off as king of the mountain quickly. Form shifting is a decisive matter and often the correct answer is to heal in most spots where it comes up. That’s not to say cat form isn’t stronger, as it is, but the opportunity cost between the two abilities aren’t comparable. For a shaman, it is just a GCD because they have pockets of time to wait naturally in their healing style, whereas for resto druid the opportunity cost is far higher because they don’t. If you shift at an incorrect time, it rarely hurts the shaman unless the moment is super pivotal, but it’s always a net loss for a druid, so it becomes a higher risk, higher reward scenario.

Likewise, comparing Typhoon and Tremor totem fits the same bill. Ability for ability, your breakdown makes sense…from the perspective of only shaman. The talent opportunity cost for Tremor is nearly free compared to Typhoon, which requires giving up damage or defensive boosts. Typhoon, in DF trees, comes at a real cost due to tree layout. It has the potential to be better, but it isn’t fire and forget, which gives it the potential to be worse. Again, it’s another case of opportunity cost and risk/reward, where you’re only comparing the high end outcome of a skilled player AND assuming no difference in opportunity cost; this isn’t actually the case.

We DO have an Echo ability…on our worst heal. In raids, the gain from this is practically non-existent, but it does have value in M+. The more a druid is leaning into using this talent, however, the less efficiently they’re playing. Druid heals are all about GCD management, and Regrowth is rarely worth a GCD when not free and/or urgent. Often, outside of that you regrowth the tank more or less for the stupidly weak HoT, and while we technically get two echoes of the HoT, one is almost always going onto the tank which is where we would usually be placing it, and the other is almost always on ourselves or a priority heal for a mechanic, neither of which typically cares about the echo in 90% of situations. What this talent REALLY does is basically give us an extra HoT on self for mastery to keep us more stabilized through misplays, but mastery tends to be the stat we only ever want “enough” of. A resto druid struggling to heal may well need 15% of it, and higher tiered players may dip down to 5-8%, where the lower the mastery, the more sharply this talent falls off. We don’t take this because it is actually good, we take it because it does slightly more than anything else for the point.

Barkskin and Shift are comparable. Shift is by far the stronger of the two, but Barkskin is up more often. If given the choice, I would trade Bark for Shift, but that would be too strong for RDruid.

Your form comparisons are a tad off for mobility. Out of combat, you are correct in that Ghost v Travel, but in practical cases, it’s Ghost v Cat. You are right in that cat has faster burst windows every so often and that they even out after a handful of seconds. But what you ommitted is that anytime cat form has enough time to REALLY benefit from this movement burst, Ghost Form is serving as a growing defensive. Not that Cat isn’t universally better, just that you can’t make this comparison without the DR from Ghost mattering, making the utility option here a tad misleading.

Efflo and Rain are comparable in use. Efflo can be moved and lasts longer, but also costs more mana. Again, this is a risk/reward where if you play both identically, it’s stronger for the Shaman, but the power in the druid flavor is the versatility of trading some resource for a chance at more strength and a risk of wasting more resource. Moving efflo correctly is stronger than rain and can be very mana efficient IF you’re good at predicting pack placement. But misplaying this is intense on mana, and a reshuffle also costs a GCD, so a misplay on efflo is also more expensive than Rain. Your comparison isn’t bad here btw, it just overlooks the nuance of the RDruid side of things, and once again only makes the comparison from purely the shaman side of things.

Shield v Innervate, per your description, sounds as if Shaman utility here isn’t good, but consider the two more indepth. Innervate is off GCD and gives 10 seconds, where the maximum number of spells that can be cast is 10 during the window, once every 3 minutes. If using all instant casts, you’ll get all 10, but you need around 40-50% haste or Tree (major CD) for Regrowth to fit in, and as Wild Growth is often one of our best spells to cast in this window we often can’t hit haste to fit it in, thus a BEST use innervate is effectively 9 free spells over 180 seconds, or an average of one free spell per 20 seconds; the same pacing as Water Shield. Now to your credit, druid can leverage more total MP back by using Efflo and Wildgrowth. Again, this is a risk/reward mechanic, where innervate in the hands of a geared and good resto druid is going to always push out 9 high impact spells and anything short of that case sharply falls off in value, favoring the Regen of Water Shield. But you’re also comparing the “free spells” portion here. Water Shield continues to provide mana Regen more evenly which means less need to risk long drinks, which resto druid often needs to plan around at times. Water Shield continues to work during incap moments, whereas an Innervate into a missed interrupt incap decimates the mana economy of the resto druid, costing damage or time. Yet another lane of risk/reward, as there isn’t really a “wrong way to play water shield” but there is nuance to innervate, such as when to pop it suboptimally for a critical moment. Flexibility at the expense of resource/time is basically RDruid’s niche. Mana tide giving a free spell every so often, in the 1v1 comparison, makes the mana economy slightly more favorable in keys, but in raid, it’s a different story. Rdruid is getting shared Innervate back, which often means we trade half of our mana economy option to gift another healer mana economy. We can time it such to push their ramps, but at the expense of less total economy; options come at a decision cost. Meanwhile, mana tide provides that free mana to a handful of others. It takes roughly TWO innervates that are used we’ll be other healers to be comparable. If two innervates go into other healers AND no innervate is wasted, we out economy the first mana tide by a decent chunk. The thing is, in any window where this is possible, the shaman can already be on their second mana tide and provide VASTLY higher net mana to healers. This is also why you should be looking to use that sucker EARLY in the fight for the first time. If you’re waiting for mana to be bad before your first time, you’re misplaying it. While these two abilities are comparable in the sense that they are both mana economy abilities, shaman gains higher total economy for basically zero risk, whereas resto druid has the potential for higher total IMPACT at the risk of even less economy. And this also assumes that mana expenditures are comparable. As druids are a HoT class, we tend to overheal a lot as we need to PREDICT damage and misplays to stay afloat. We’ve got good CDs to recover, but unlike other healers where CDs are for rough moments, our CDs are somewhat rotational. When you mispull in an M+ and pop Spirit Link, you come out of that pull with the same resources you would typically expect to have going into the next, whereas RDruid does not. Now, if pulls go smooth such that RDruid doesn’t NEED to use these CDs, such as by making greedier plays with payoff, then they come out ahead. But there is a window where we often have to come up with a plan to compensate and quick, and often to the tune of pushing mana harder or giving up damage.

While I could go on about 75% of your comparisons, the general concept seems to be the same:

  1. You are making these comparisons through the lens of someone who regularly plays RShaman but not RDruid.

  2. As such, you are missing out on the risk/reward that allows druid utility and options to be strong. In the hands of stronger players, RDruids REALLY benefit from a wide kit. If we were to compare the two specs to riding bikes, RShaman utility is akin to riding with training wheels and RDruid utility is akin to riding without. Both are riding bikes, but the risk of falling off and/or getting hurt by the RShaman is much lower as the average person doesn’t just know how to ride a bike. Meanwhile, the average person who jumps onto a bike for the first time almost certainly falls off. Some people learn just enough to ride-ish, but some go on to push their bike riding. If RShaman utility is akin to a rider with training wheels, then RDruid utility is akin to BMX; BMX may be impressive and such riders REALLY do nuts things…but because they’ve had to take risks and fail and learn and iterate and repeat. It doesn’t make either utility set superior, mind you, just that your comparisons are “training wheels vs BMX” when they overlook the “training wheels vs riding a bike” analogy.

  3. Play Resto druid. Your knowledge on Shaman seems deep enough to play it well, but your knowledge of Resto Druid seems to be at an overview. If you DO play resto druid, perhaps you play it at such a prolific level of play from the start that you went straight to BMX and never rode the bike; anything less than that, play an RDruid and really get that aggressive DPS in, and you’ll appreciate how much more free RShaman utility is.

  4. But to your original point, Shamans do need some subtle buffs here and there if rot damage is going to be so prominent in season 2. It isn’t that RShaman is really doing bad, mind you, but that the healing patterns are so slanted to proactive mindsets and RShaman tends to reward a reactive mindset. You don’t need to BE a resto druid to heal high end content, but you certainly have to THINK like one.

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Resto druid shaman compare? No way. You are correct, shamans need attention. I remember years ago blizz buffed thorns so much that a rogue would attack me and in 30 sec they would kill themselves

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Thats Blizz Dev math

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450+10%=495 (not 445)

Not saying I disagree with the post though.

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/thread

Lol

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My bad on the typos, I hate being on the forums. So I try and rush through these things.

500 - 10% = 450
450 +10% = 495
450+11%(49) = 499
450+12%(54)= 504

Dunno why people can’t tell the dif on a typo… when its apparent i was scaling… to prove the point that subtracting and adding the same % was NOT the same… which is the entire point I was trying to make… when even 11% left it 1 point short of the starting 500… after the original 10% nerf.

My point was simple that the 10% buff wasn’t enough because the nerf they did was greater then the buff…

I played Rdruid, have ksm for several expansions. Even did some +20s,

I never claimed it was a 1 for 1 exact replica of a skill. YOU are doing that, I said they are on par with how they work just different applications, You really didn’t need to sit there and write out a huge long relist to dispute the spell comparisons to try and list a ‘risk/reward’ LOC when all classes have the ‘risk/reward’ it’s called ‘playstyle’. They are ‘different’ in how they apply/play which I already stated. But they ARE the same…

A group heal is a group heal no matter how it’s applied when you are suppose to have the CLASSES balanced. Same with single target OR raid healing etc…

It doesn’t matter as much about the application if the skills are balanced. Because every skill is risk/rewarded like so which is up to the user to decide.

Please do not get ‘playstyle’ mixed up with skill balances. There’s a huge difference between the two.

As for R-druid i’ve done catweaving/balance weaving before it was even called ‘weaving’. I’m not disputing playstyle semantics, only skill balances.

The skills i’ve listed are essentially the same skill but rehashed to a different playstyle. I think that is where you got confused on my points. I was not going into depth about playstyle which is a completely different element within itself. But literally numbers incomparison to likeminded skills.

I did not go into playstyles for 2 reasons. There’s are many ways to play any given class is the first one, and i’d like to keep it that way. The second is that by going into a playstyle and labeling that particular playstyle as a ‘meta’ choice, you force others to play the same way as you. Which breaks uniqueness of the class. (Think about what they did to paladins, yes you use to benefit from your mastery as far back as BC - but it wasn’t a requirement to play the way that is currently forced on pallies. It was optional, it was fun and different - now if you don’t play that way - your garbage and the class isn’t as fun anymore - there’s no more real ‘ranged healer’ or ‘health sacrificing’ playstyles for pally healers, all of them use to be viable. It’s only ‘melee healer’ now .)

This is the sole reason why I avoided playstyle comparison and stuck ONLY with skill to skill relations. I am against regulating playstyles for classes, because those risk/reward scenarios you kept talking about is literally “playstyle” and goes into “class identity”. I don’t like cloned classes, but I do like balances. On a skill per skill balance scenario I am 100% correct in how I labeled the skills.

Again that post had nothing to do with the actual playstyle/risk reward scenario. This was ONLY heal per heal sklill based for the sake of balances, action per action comparisons. Nothing more. So I hope that helps you see where exactly I am pulling these comparisons. And WHY I didn’t go into playstyle risk/reward scenarios.

Like most druids will tell you that the bug skill (can’t think the name of it this second) is no in relation to a prayer of mending. However, when you add the modifier it becomes a POM on crack.

Meaning the coding for the skill now resembles a hyped up POM; that splits when hit (verses leaving a renew on transfer).

So I didn’t go into the modifiers which again relate more to class identity, because no class should be the same. But again as a skill per skill basis. Yes, I am 100% correct.

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Druid and Shaman never should have been a separate class. They are too similar. Most video games combine the class.

Take for example the diablo Druid or any druid or warden class from any game.

They control the elements and plants, they turn into animals. They notably heal.

Current WoW Shaman is just a great value version of a druid.

Evoker healer is just an overturned mix of druid / Shaman with some restrictions locked behind charges and essences so they don’t appear too much like a druid and shaman. lol.

Especially I love the Obsidian scales it is totally rich because add in hover and that’s a spirit walker’s grace and aegis for a flat-out 18 seconds being uninterruptible. Meanwhile, Rsham has 5 seconds do to something with our immunity to interrupts.